When your enemies attack you, it’s not that big of a deal because you expect it. When your friends do, that can sting. It can also surprise you.
That's what many Fox News viewers felt like Tuesday night during the network's midterm election coverage.
Like the other cable news outlets, Fox News dedicated its evening programming to coverage of the 2018 midterm elections, which saw Democrats retake the House but Republicans expand their majority in the Senate. So much for that “blue wave” we’ve all been hearing about for the past year.
But the one network that’s been pretty fair to POTUS Donald Trump and Republicans in general behaved more like its “establishment” competitors that fabricate stories and practice what we in the news business used to call “yellow journalism" a century ago.
At one point during election night coverage, Laura Ingraham, host of the network’s “The Ingraham Angle,” was forced by senior correspondent Chris Wallace to defend her statement that thanks to POTUS, Republicans in the Senate expanded their majority, since the vast majority of GOP Senate candidates he stumped for won their races Tuesday.
“This is one thing we do know, if the Republicans were not able to take the seats that they took tonight there would be a cavalcade of criticism on Donald Trump,” Ingraham said. “They would say, ‘It’s Trump’s fault, look he went to all these cities and he couldn’t turn the vote.’ I believe if Donald Trump hadn’t done that massive rally in Texas last week … I don’t know if Ted Cruz would have won,” she said referencing his tight race against Democratic Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, who received massive amounts of campaign cash from outside donors.
She went onto note — correctly — that the GOP is “coming home” to the president as a “unified” party. And while elected Republicans may not always agree with what the president tweets or says, “I think most of the party realize if they are not aligned behind the basic principles of this conservative populist approach with Trump — not his tone necessarily but his policies — you’re not going anywhere,” said Ingraham.
She added that, in contrast, the Democratic Party is moving far to Left, more in line with newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. (Related: New majority: Dems ALREADY planning multiple probes, POTUS impeachment talks.)
Americans don’t want another version of CNN
Wallace didn’t care for that.
“I don’t think that’s fair to say about the Democrats. That’s a complete mischaracterization,” he insisted.
“They’re liberal!” Ingraham responded, according to The Gateway Pundit.
“It’s not because they went far left, it’s because they have women with intelligence or military credentials and there’s this character out there,” Wallace said. “Let’s wait and see what the margin is and what their policies are and if you’re going to give the Republicans credit for holding on to the Senate, then I think you have to give Democrats credit for actually flipping the House.”
This exchange came before the network pulled what the ‘other’ Left-wing establishment networks like to pull on election day: Report ballot victories before they actually occur, which — when you think about it — is a form of voter suppression.
As PJ Media notes, the network called Democrats retaking the House very early — such as when most analytical tracking sites still had Republicans with a mid-40-percent chance of keeping it:
With just two gains by Democrats and still early in the evening, [host Brett] Baier suddenly announced that the Democrats had taken the House. Not “we project that they’ve taken the House” (an addition they made later after, no doubt because complaints flooded their phone lines). Not simply “we think this will be a good night for the Democrats based on our analysis.” Nope, they jumped ahead in time and declared it as if it had already occurred -- with many people not even voting yet.
Fox News has been a bastion of fairness and a beacon of sanity in the Trump era. If the network loses those qualities, Fox will become just a slightly redder version of CNN, which hardly anyone watches.
Read more about how the news cartels are stifling truth at NewsCartels.com.
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